A book for the coffee table containing 450 photos of Apple products
Cost?
Just a mere US$300.00 - don't worry the pictures appear to be HD.

So let's do some Math:

1 picture = 1000 words
450 pictures = 450 000 words

Wow... that's value for money there.

The article says: "A book like this takes courage"

I think it takes courage to sell and courage to buy!

Here's the Article:

Apple releases US$300 book containing 450 photos of Apple productsA book like this takes courage
by James VincentNov 15, 2016

Running out of Christmas ideas for that diehard Apple fan in your life? Well, how about a US$299 coffee table book filled with 450 photographs of Apple products. The iPhone-maker unveiled just such a tome today, announcing that the book will go on sale tomorrow at Apple.com and in select Apple retail stores. It’s a hardcover edition, bound in linen, and is available in two sizes: US$199 for a smaller 10.20" x 12.75" version, and US$299 for a larger 13" x 16.25" edition. The book is simply titled Designed by Apple in California — a name that somehow manages to be both humble and incredibly pretentious at the same time.

The photos inside are all new images shot by Andrew Zuckerman, and will show off 20 years of Apple design "in a deliberately spare style." In a press statement, chief designer Jony Ive described the book as "a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years," and hoped that it would serve as a "resource for students of all design disciplines."

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In the foreword to the book, Ive writes:

While this is a design book, it is not about the design team, the creative process, or product development. It is an objective representation of our work that, ironically, describes who we are. It describes how we work, our values, our preoccupations, and our goals. We have always hoped to be defined by what we do rather than by what we say.

We strive, with varying degrees of success, to define objects that appear effortless. Objects that appear so simple, coherent, and inevitable that there could be no rational alternative.
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The book is published by Apple itself, and is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs. It is, undeniably, an act of corporate vanity publishing on an impressive scale, but it's one Apple deserves to get away with more than pretty much any other tech company. No one denies that when it comes to industrial design, Apple earns the praise it gets.

That aside, though, the book’s publication does show a certain amount of self-interest, navel-gazing, and even arrogance from Apple — themes that were also present in September’s unveiling of the new MacBook Pros. It’s all very well to feel proud of the successes of the past, but we'll be interested to see if the company can justify releasing another such book 20 years from now.

Staff Member

Following up the quick success of the latest MacBook Pro Apple CDO Jony Ive sat back in his chair and smiled. He calmly stroked his iPhone 7 and chuckled. Apple has reached a pinnacle of design success, 3.5mm jacks and only using USB-C be damned. Now the people would actually see what Jony Ive has seen all these years because Apple, in its infinite quest of revolutionary design and innovation, has released a visual guide. A glimpse inside the heads of its design teams over the years. A final farewell to Steve Jobs.
A coffee table book titled “Designed by Apple in California”.

If there is one thing Apple loves to do, is look itself in the mirror while self pleasuring its product line in front of the tech press and consumers. Apple loves Apple more than anything in the world and that has created an ecosystem of unique products and industry changing design decisions. It has also created a reputation of luxury exclusivity and narcissistic tech idolization. This book, released today, is the pinnacle of decades of doing things ‘differently’.

“The idea of genuinely trying to make something great for humanity was Steve’s motivation from the beginning, and it remains both our ideal and our goal as Apple looks to the future,” said Ive in a press release. “This archive is intended to be a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years. We hope it brings some understanding to how and why they exist, while serving as a resource for students of all design disciplines.”

Jobs’ motivation for creating something great for humanity was never in question. His goal was always to create products that changed how people interacted with the technological world. Since his death however, the overreaching goal of Apple has been to create a luxury brand with sharp exclusivity and limited inter-connectivity with the rest of the tech landscape. This is evident in creating a coffee table book of pictures of Apple products that itself is a luxurious reminder of where Apple is now.

The book is available in two sizes and printed on “specially milled, custom-dyed paper with gilded matte silver edges, using eight color separations and low-ghost ink.” It has been in development for eight years (unlike your coffee table book with silly pictures of nature). The small version will run you US$199 while the large version will cost US$299. That’s right. Apple knows that innovation in coffee table book design means a higher price point.

In the book’s forward Ive writes “While this is a design book, it is not about the design team, the creative process, or product development. It is an objective representation of our work that, ironically, describes who we are. It describes how we work, our values, our preoccupations, and our goals. We have always hoped to be defined by what we do rather than by what we say.”

This self glamorizing narcissism by Apple truly takes the company to a new level.The level of Bond Villain. The level of Patrick Bateman flexing his biceps in the mirror, but with less sociopathy. We know it’s not about the design team or the creative process, we know that it’s Apple’s best way of trying to show the highly romanticized view it takes of its own product line.

While it is perfectly acceptable for a company to truly love the product it produces, putting it all in a book and charging hundreds of dollars for it just seems like Apple has finally gotten lost in its own reflection. As much as this book is for Apple itself, it is true fanboy porn.